Tim Ellis Hangs Out With The Magic Guys! #169

They're guys they do magic they are the magic guys, oh that was a good coin vanish if everyone uh watching the pod we just had a sweet sweet coin vanish you know i i like watching back these episodes because i get to see the the tricks that we do when the intro starts you know because i'm always just i'm always just like looking at the camera's eye, not the screen in that moment.

So I like, I miss it. But you do some pretty magical coin vanishes, Nick K. Well, you're a pretty awesome magician yourself there, Josh Nabito. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks. I noticed you didn't compliment my coin skills. So we'll just move along there. Hey, what's up everyone? Episode 169 of the Magic Guides. It's great to have you all here. And I can see a couple of new names in the comment section. Caden, good to see you. Finally able to join one of these lives.

Thank you for being here my friend the magic buzz no uh stranger to the magic guys and tim asking one of the regulars timmy t as we call him uh and nick how are you feeling today my friend, i'm really it's a great day man it's a great day i get to hang out with another one of my awesome friends other than yourself of course and a shame that doug can't be here he's out there doing beautiful things with his lovely partner what a sweetheart he is he's a good man man, a damn good man.

And I'm really stoked because, well, our guest today, you know, went from being a hero to being a friend. And he's been one of the most important people in my magic career since day one in my 16 year career. So it's really cool that like, I get to hang out with him. Every moment I hang out with him is awesome and he's going to be in the show. So I'm pumped. And Nick says that to me every week and every week I say, man, Man, it's no problem. I love being here with you.

You know, we're funny like that. Where's my, there it is. There's our rim shot. So yeah, this is going to be an exciting episode. This guy, he has a lot to do with magic in Australia. And you know, whenever we have a guest on, have you noticed this, Nick? And we say like, who in Australia do you know? This is usually the guy that they reference, that they know of, if anyone from Australia. And so I think we should, we should bring him on. And Nick, what better way to intro him than with Nick K.

Friends, our next guest has been one of the most important figures in Australian magic. He has been responsible for so many amazing pieces of magic and been responsible for so much infrastructure that the Melbourne magic scene, if not the entire Australian scene, has to offer. It is my absolute pleasure to have him on the show. So please join me in welcoming the amazing Mr. Tim Ellis. Music.

Tim Ellis thank you so much for being on the podcast and thank you for being my friend please tell our lovely audience who are you what do you do I'm Tim Ellis I'm a magician that's it, perfect my friends thanks for listening uh next week we're gonna have um, we'll see you next time thanks I'm just kidding Tim can I ask that that what you just showed us when you came on is that is that what's called light reading is that what that is,

absolutely you've got that's what it said on the box when i got it i said a little light reading, that's so good that's so good and what what castle are you streaming from today tim my own castle in northcote i'm in the merlin room here in the laneway theater, oh that might be a good place to start what magician has the luxury of just having their own theatre, so close to home, you might say.

How long have you had the Laneway Theatre? And sort of could you give the viewers a little rundown on sort of what it is? So I've lived here for about 20 years or so in Northcote in what used to be the Australian Broom Company. It used to be a factory. It was a very – I can show you actually a little picture. I can show you a picture of what it was when I got it. There we go. That's how it looked when I got the factory. Oh, wow.

So it was a bit of a mess when I got to the thing. It looks like something out of like a zombie apocalyptic type of movie. Like very, like dust in the air. You really couldn't walk in for very much time. It was just terrible, but it was a good price. It was a good price. So I purchased it back in. Okay. This will tell me this book has got all the information, 1997. So I got in 1997 and downstairs was just my rehearsal studio and offices.

Offices and upstairs living space and then eventually i was like oh we really need a place to have magic where people can come to see magic in the way it's meant to be seen and in a beautiful custom-built venue and so as i've heard nick k told the story before i happened across hoitz greensboro cinema that was selling their seats and someone on ebay had bought them so i bought a whole bunch of the seats from him filled up my garage with the,

realized well if i want to ever park my car again i'm gonna have to build this theater We built the theater and the rest is history. I really like the fact that every magician has a dream to have a theater, but to actually have the theater in your own house is so good. Because if your sales are not very good one night, just don't open, it doesn't cost you no overheads. It's fantastic. When you finish the show, leave a mess, go upstairs, have a cup of tea and go to bed. It's so easy.

Wow. And you actually have other magicians performing in your theater, right? At times? Yeah. Every year I do a brand new 90 minute show that I put together because I love creating new shows. So I think I've done maybe six or seven different shows since 20, oh, not 2017. We opened it. When did we open it? Yeah, 2017. So that's only seven years. So I've probably done eight shows and they were all different. Like Aspiket Abra was one talking about my Asperger's syndrome and how it helps

with my magic and hinders. I've done some poker shows. I've done stand-up shows. I did one called The Magic Menu, which was based on the Zoom show that I did. So I've done a whole bunch of different shows in here on Saturday nights. But then we also had Slight Night, which was four different magicians. Nicholas Johnson used to run that every month. And now that has evolved into For My Next Trick, which Nick Kay, I think you're coming up on it, aren't you, in June?

You're being featured on that one. And we've also done Magic Sports here during Comedy Festival. Lawrence Lung has done a tryout show. Dom Chang has got a tryout show coming up, you know, where they try new material. We've had magicians at work here at the Landway Theatre when we weren't able to get back to the Arts Centre after COVID. And lots of other magicians, including Nick Kay and Josh Staley and other people,

have done their own solo shows. And we do shows here during the Magic Festival as well. I've had a guy doing a puppet show here once. I've sat in burlesque shows, stand-up comedy shows. But I only rent it out to my friends. Thanks for watching! Wow. Well, and how does it feel when you're upstairs and you can hear a magic show happening downstairs? I'm usually downstairs watching the magic show. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. I get free tickets. That's the bonus.

The question about the theatre, Sam, now this obviously, this was existing before the theatre was in place. But for those of you who haven't experienced the Mainway Theatre, it's a very magical experience, even upon arrival, because it's like finding a beautiful secret. Kind of like getting to platform, you know, nine and three quarters sort of vibe. And what I'm curious about is what was the motivation for you?

For those of you who don't know, when you walk in, you go through a graveyard and then you enter a theater. And what was the motivation to do the graveyard? I've never actually had an opportunity to ask you before. The graveyard already existed. No kidding. Before the theater, but not before the warehouse.

No, I get that. that but like i did a show for the footwear industry at the grand hyatt called the night of the lost souls you could do your room shot there nice and we had my my partner at the time did the the gravestones and made these headstones and so afterwards we had all these headstones so what could we do oh we'll use the front room because the front room was always left as the the original factory broom cap factory so there's things in there that are actual old mechanisms and like

there's millet machine which scrapes all the millet off it's like a huge tumbler with spikes all over and there's all this weird stuff in there so that was always there so i kept one part of the room factory exactly as it was and so that's the part that we changed and made into a graveyard and we put an infinity pit in there so it's like you look down you can see forever down this massive pit.

There's all sorts of different things. And then of course we changed the front door into a coffin, so you have to come through a coffin to get. But one of the things I like is, and other people will dispute this, but I like the fact that we don't publish the address. And when people put the address on Google, we change it again, because we don't want people to know exactly where it is. Because I don't want people knocking on my door on a Wednesday afternoon going, is this the Laneway Theatre?

Because they go, no, not today. On Saturday, it will be, but it's not the Laneway Theatre today. I really enjoy my privacy.

So people, when they book their tickets, they get the address and they get a map and they have to find their way. And a lot of people do find it challenging because they think, oh, I don't need to download the map, I'll just look on Google. And then they're wandering the streets. So I get phone calls, where are you? I go, you didn't get to download the map, did you?

And then they find the front door. And a lot of people say, I've had reviews saying, I was a bit concerned because I found myself walking down murder alley. And I wasn't sure I was in the right place. And then so you just basically buzz on the doorbell. And I answer with hello. And that's it. And you have to know the code word before I'll actually approve you and let you in. and then you do come into the graveyard. And I've warned you, you must find your way through the coffin.

So some people come straight through. Other people actually get lost. They try to cross the bottomless pit because there's another door, which they think, oh, maybe that's the right door. So we usually have to rescue a few people every night. It's quite fun. Well, it makes for a good story as well. So I think they actually come in and they're like, I've got my money's worth already. And they do love the fact that they can bring their friends and their friends are like, where are you taking me?

Am I going to die what's what is this place so it's really because I mean you, there's no frontage to this to my place I'm on the back section of a warehouse and you have to come down an alley that does not look, nice. And yeah, you do, you do get a bit of concerned if you're in the right place on it, but once you're in there, it really feels like you've discovered a treasure, hidden treasure. And Melbourne is all about secret venues.

A hundred percent. You know, it's almost like a speakeasy there.

Question, Josh? Man, I just can't wait to come and actually check it out when I'm in Melbourne. One of our guests just even just said then, I think I've walked in on on a strange point in this conversation. Yeah. Bottomless pits and you got to walk through the coffin and yeah. Now, now I'm understanding. Loris Long refers to it as like, it's a cross between the magic castle and a sex dungeon.

I want to talk about how, how I first stumbled upon yourself when I saw you performing, you were originally hosting the galas at the Melbourne magic festival. And that's when I first connected with yourself while seeing you. And it wasn't until afterwards where I had set up a friendship with Nicholas J. Johnson. And then he said that, oh, you should get this guy to do Magic Festival shows and so forth. The Magic Festival has been running for how many years now? 15, is it, Tim?

We started in 2008 and we had 3,200 guests watching 58 performances. And now? Last year, we had 10,500 guests watching 158 performances, but the best year was 2019, just before the pandemic. We had 17,000 guests watching 310 performances over two weeks. That is wild. So, you know, the thing that I find, like the motivation for you doing the things that you do, it's really staggering because the reason I say that is like, Like, yes, you organized a festival and, you know, it's great for magic.

None of it benefits you a whole deal, if I'm being honest. Everything that you've done for the scene. And I just wanted to commend you for that to our audience, because you do things for no other reason than it's good for magic. And I just want to help magic. So let's take it to the beginning. What made you go, Melbourne needs a magic festival? To the beginning. So I was learning magic from Lindsay Reichel and a group called The Young Magicians.

Or teenage magicians and so i felt like i was being given everything you know all the help all the support everything and so ever since then i've wanted to return the favor and i probably you know probably people oh you've done enough but i'm like i still i still see performers coming up who just need a little bit of a push and i like to help them and and you know you'll often find i'm sure nicks had the situation where i'm sort of going

through a two dollar shop or something They're like, hey, and I send a picture of this item. You're going to buy it. It's going to work for your trick or whatever it is. So I've always loved the fact that when you are a magician and you're aware of other people. It's not just you're looking for things for your show, but you can see things for their show as well and share that information.

And I just think that's the way it should be. And unfortunately for a lot of people, magic is a very competitive art form as opposed to collegiate. And I can understand you and a lot of people like I've got to pay for the kids. I've got to pay for their university. I've got to pay for their school. I've got to pay for all this sort of stuff they've got to cover.

But you don't need to compete with each other. You don't need to sort of go like edge someone out of the gig just because you want the gig and you need the money. because if you support each other, you end up giving each other gigs. That's the way it should be in my mind. I could be too naive for that. But that's the way I've always thought.

And so as this group of young magicians grew up, I realized that by pushing everybody as a group, it's much more unique, a unique selling proposition for the media than it is just pushing myself.

And so I would push people for the group. And this is the challenge that I had, especially pre-Magic Festival, we had a thing called magic week which was back in the 80s and it was a bit like the magic festival but different and so i would often say hey media it's magic week coming up and they go great we want to do a story i call the other magicians they want to do a story they're like i'm not available today could they do it next week no they want to do it now and what

about you i'm a bit busy though and i would end up doing the stories and then i'd get oh he's just doing it for himself he's always the one in the stories i'm like i offered it to you please you know because i don't want the media just going there seems to only be one guy involved in magic quick you know yeah i want to see the range of magic because that's the the beauty of magic because there's so many different styles and different types you know people come to the magic festival now

and they're amazed they see they don't want to just see one show they want to see 10 15 different shows because they see so many different types of magic and different you know the sleight of hand grand illusion even the kids shows the kids shows are fantastic adults come along to see the kids shows just because they appreciate you know the abilities of the performers you know that's really why i do what i do magic is the the least appreciated and least developed of all

the art forms in my opinion in. There's so much to do. And now I'm sitting here, you know, I'm turning 61 tomorrow and I'm going. I don't have enough time left to do everything I want to do.

Well, that's an interesting point you make, Tim, because I had a conversation with you no more than a week ago talking about the time we have left and so forth, and should I be worried about this, and should I be thinking, because I'm turning 40 this year, so a part of me was going like, oh, do I need to start planning an exit strategy? And zero advice was like, nah, man, you're good to 75. And I was like, cool, thanks.

You know? Well, I was on a cruise ship a couple of weeks ago, and the cruise director was 78.

Wow. wow it's how to do i was like well it was sort of good it was sort of bad because i was also going i don't want to be on a cruise ship when i'm 78 and having slightly lost the plot, or do you is that the best place well he seemed really happy you know but it was really it was his ship and it was his world and we were just a part of it yeah yeah so let me ask you this tim Tim, like you've been in the game for so many years.

You've got a 20 plus year, well, you know, career in the spotlight. And well, I'm being polite. Okay, you've been around a lot longer. We get it, right? There's a lot of people you've helped along the way. I'm one of them. And I like to think that I express my gratitude to you in not as many ways, but I definitely tell you that I appreciate you.

What's it like when you go through your career, helping so many people, And then the moment you need a little hand back or ask if they will contribute the smallest little something to it, does that happen to you in your career when you go like, hey, man, if you wouldn't mind, could you do this? And they go, nah. It's people. You can't, you can't expect to get something back. And I feel like that's in, in, sorry, Tim, I feel like that's in every industry

too, right? Like it's not, it's a human nature. If you're going to give, just give and don't expect anything in return. And if people don't give back, like way back in the day, I formed a company called magic unlimited and there was a group of us and the bookings would disproportionately come into me. And so the other guy's like, how come he's getting all the bookings? I'm trying to farm them out, but if that's the way it goes, that's the way it goes.

And so I would often give out bookings to other people, and then I'd be wondering why I wasn't getting referrals back from them. And I was speaking to somebody about this the other day and saying the solution was essentially to say, look, I'll give you a booking. You send me a $50 finder's fee, and we're square. And then you don't feel like the relationship's out of proportion. You're not feeling like, I've given you 10 referrals this month and you've given me none.

What's going on? You go, I've given you 10 referrals. You give me 10 finder's fees. We're square. That's fine. I also think it's important to identify the difference. You're right. But I also think it's important in those situations to identify the difference between a friendship transaction and a business transaction. There's things you would do just because you're friends. You know what I mean? When I was at the theater building chairs at your place, I wasn't like,

yeah, my fee's $40 an hour. Like that was not going to happen. I was like, you were like, bro, I'm building a theater. And I'm like, I'm on my way. I grabbed my tool bag and I was there and I had power tool.

And then, you know, I built half the chairs in that place. And I was so happy to just be a part of it because I, Everything is just good for magic. And I think that the lesson from this listeners is that if you, if you give for this, for the sake of giving without the expectation of anything in return, but do it to propagate things forward and not for your own self gain, you can only do well. And if you, for those watching live right now, there's a picture of me right there on the YouTube.

I think that's a photo of, that's a photo of Nick hiding a card reveal inside a cushion. So that if it ever happens, One day he's going to say, where's your card? Slice that chair open. It's basically an index. He's got an index laid out. He knows which chair has which card. But no, that's amazing. The abundant mindset is something I've always believed in, and you're just explaining it to the thousandth degree. Magic is good for everyone. Good magic is good for everyone.

I like to think we've got a really good community here in Melbourne. But i mean they're they're always going to be clicks and everything like that but every time we have magicians visiting especially if they come to magicians at work which is our monthly sort of get together jam session they go i wish i had this in my club because they see that the magicians are actually helping each other they you know they're they're working together there was one magician who came to a magic festival who was

he had an like certain certain cities have different attitudes so some people have got like a bit of a you know competitive attitude in the city. So he came in with a bit of competitive attitude. And at one point, he had to put his whole setup really quickly. And the other magicians just jumped in and helped him. Even though he'd been not especially nice to anybody, they just jumped in, helped him. And he's like, wow.

And it just immediately changed his whole mindset to be like, I I've never experienced this before, but magicians help each other. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, that's how it should be. Yeah. What's that? And, and the fact that you mentioned that you're always on the lookout for props and things that would help people with their acts. I mean, you literally did that before we started this podcast, you held up a prop and was like, Nick, this is what you need for your next day.

You literally did it before the show. He held up something that he wants Nick to have. You want to show the listeners for a giggle? Is it, is it nearby? By look at this this is this is gonna look so good on the car you gotta say oh yeah this is how we should have started the episode i should have introduced everyone with you you wearing that i'm gonna look like a discount what's his name chronicles of riddick dude.

Well he did say that the laneway theater is a cross between the magic castle and a sex dungeon So those glasses kind of look like the, the dungeon part. That's appropriate. Very appropriate. Yeah. I have a question, Tim. Over, over the years, you've done a really good job at, cause I've noticed you have TV appearances throughout different eras, like different shows that I remember being on at different points. And every year I seem to spot you on something promoting the Melbourne Magic Festival.

Festival and like do you have any advice for magicians out there that are trying to get themselves known or get some kind of media of themselves like how do you go about getting yourself on tv or on a segment i'm too old school i mean back in the day when we started the magic festival it was just a case of put an ad in the age theater directory or the herald son listings and everyone would come it was that simple and i

was able to call up the newspaper and say say, hey, we're having the magic festival. They go, oh, that sounds good. Let's do a story on it. We had like four or five page features on the magic festival. And then the. Oh, sorry, I'm going back a little bit to Magic Week, and we had massive stories. And then at one point they said, oh, is this part of the Spoleto Festival that has just started?

And I said, no, it's not. And they said, oh, we're not allowed to report on it then because Spoleto had poured so much money into advertising they'd pretty much bought up the media. So that's when the Magic Week ended, and then there was nothing for a while. And then once I moved here to Northcote and got a good relationship with the Northcote Town Hall, I said, let's do a festival because Northgate Town Hall wanted to become a festival venue, a theatre venue.

So we created the first Melbourne Magic Festival in 2008. And again, I was able to still go back to the media and say, hey, it's the festival. And I just love the fact that at the end of each show, they would hand an envelope of cash to the producer of the performance and say, there's your money for the night. It was so good back in those days. And obviously things have changed. I mean, this is 2008. It's not that long ago.

Go but that this is this is how we were doing you know we're just promoting and going on but then as the internet became more prolific and everyone started doing social media and newspapers became irrelevant and tv became more impossible to get on unless you were a survivor or a bachelor or something like that it was impossible and so now i i have no idea how to promote the festival i do the best I can.

We've hired professional companies and found they got us less coverage than I was able to get just using advertising on Facebook and stuff. So yeah, I really don't know. It's like the Wild West out there. People say, yeah, pay us $10,000 and we'll get you this much coverage. And you do, and they don't. And that's the end of it. You've lost your chance to find someone else.

So yeah, I don't know. The one thing I do know is that it's much easier to get coverage and media interest for a festival than it is for a one-man show.

And that's again a benefit of magicians coming together and working together i mean comedy festivals a perfect example of it i mean put aside all the government funding and all this corporate sponsorships they've got but as soon as comedy festivals on everyone wants to go see comedy shows as soon as it finishes crickets the comedy scene in melbourne is very quiet, but during the festival it's huge and we find the same thing with melbourne

magic festival i I remember Simon Coronel came and he did his first show here. He was like, wow, this is amazing. I'm so surprised everyone came to see the shows. So he then produced a show of his own at one of the venues and was like, oh, it's so much harder for people to come and see a one-off show than it is to see it go during a festival. And so that's why I keep pushing the festival and saying, you know, it's a great idea. It's a good thing to do.

My mom keeps saying, could you stop doing the festival because it's exhausting you.

You're going mad doing the festival you know she's like why doesn't anybody help me again well some people help me as best they can but it's it's it has to happen you know it's just something that the melbourne non-magicians the magic fans tell me they really look forward to every year and that when the festival comes up they're all in there buying the tickets well let's also talk about how how great

the festival has been to bring talents from not only all over australia but all all over the planet. Like we've had the pleasure of flying over, you know, Danny D OTs. Yeah. This is the flyer. I'll be picking those up and doing a lot of box drops later on to date. Oh, tomorrow, Tim, but tell us this year, let's talk about this year, this upcoming, um, album magic festival. What are we expecting with regards to our international talents? Let's tell our friends.

The international talents has varied a lot over the years. We've had on Gule Lee, John Archer, Dan Sperry, Max Maven, Danny D OTs, Woody Aragon, Joshua Jay, Mario Lopez, Rob Zabrecki, Paul Hayden, Hilda Gamirez, so many different magicians who've come across. And generally they come across because I invite them. I say, we'd like to come to Australia. They go, that'd be great. And they come along.

But since COVID, it's become much harder because people don't want to travel so much and prices have gone up so much. And so, you know, where is the past? We could say, hey, do you want to come along? They go, sure. And we'd cover the costs and all this sort of stuff and they'd have a great time. Now it's much harder. Now it's sort of like negotiations and stuff like that. But thankfully, I've still got some friends who are very keen to come to Australia.

And when I was in Taiwan last year doing the Taiwan Magic Association Convention, which I love to do, and there is also, if you want to drive people crazy, there's a music video they finally released. Oh, really? Remember I had that song? We're going off track a little bit. Yo-Yo, who runs the Taiwan Magic Association, she said, for our anniversary, we want to write a song. I've written it in Chinese and here's the translation. Could you see if this works in English?

I was like, it does not work in English. It's got things like, Is my happiness such that I can have enough extra baggage to carry on with all my joy? And all this stuff, the translations were crazy. And I'm like, so I sort of tried to rewrite as best I could. And she's like, oh, I think we love it. I go, okay, that's great. Have it, have it. And so she then, because they'd had a music track recorded already. And so she said, could you sing it along to the music track so we know how it fits?

So I did. And she wrote back and said, don't worry. We've got an AI to sing it for us to see how it fits.

So in the end and there was a rap sequence she insisted i do the rap sequence live which was fine and then finally when i went and did the the convention they they said oh we're going to get you to mime the song but sing the rap sequence in the finale of the of the convention like oh okay, and they had on keyboard mario lopez was there i think on a guitar hector man she was on Ruby was on drums. All these famous magicians just coming up.

So this video clip is insane if you wanted to play Spot a Magician. So if you find it, link it up. It's really good. People already mistake us for musicians, and now you've literally made magicians musicians. That's just way too confusing now. Well, as Nick knows, I'm doing, I think, my third course in SongProf, which is improvised singing, because I just love to try pushing myself into really uncomfortable areas. I mean, one of the best clips I think I've seen,

of Tim Ellis is doing a linking rings to a rock song. I mean, your improv is pretty good. If you, if you don't mind making a fool of yourself, look, the best thing I'll get back to the magic festival in a second, but the best thing about magic sports, which is what you're talking about with drunk tech, the guy in there is you learn how to fail. You learn how to fail and enjoy it because you suddenly realize it doesn't matter if we fail, it's not brain surgery.

You know if you can't find the card be honest about it like my my story my go-to story is i was watching burton newton on tv one day live tv and he's talking and you know this new product and then oh what was that is everyone all right because he heard a noise off camera yeah okay oh good anyway and continued on and i was like he wasn't aware if the audience at home could hear the noise but he was aware that if the audience at home heard the noise they'd They'd be going,

what was that noise? And not listening to him anymore. And I was like, this is the best thing. So if something happens during your show, don't ignore it and just plow on. Oh, whoa. And you incorporate it and bring the audience in on it. And they feel like, this is live. Anything could happen. And that's the feedback we get with the audience from Magic Sports. So I've been to magic shows before, but they always look so slick. Looks like the magician knows exactly what he's going to do.

Of course, he's going to find the card. Of course, he's going to be able to solve the person's average. Of course, but with magic sports, when Nick Kay's blindfolded and Josh Staley's blindfolded and they're trying to do multiple card selections, there's no way they can do this. It's not going to work. And the audience, you know, sometimes they really enjoy the fact that you tried but you didn't get it.

You know, that's the thing with magic, you know, spontaneity, authenticity, forget about being slick and being, you know, I am the great magician because that's the old school. They like to see genuine people doing stuff. Hector Mancha is going to be.

Tangent much, Tim? Tangent much? Yeah, he is brilliant. If you've seen Hector Mancha only do his FISM act, which is what he got the world championship for, which is where he's producing monies like a miser. It's a wonderful routine. I've seen it at the side stage to see how it works, and it's just, oh, it's incredible. He's not going to bring that act. He's got better stuff.

He's got better stuff he during the the gala show he was comparing one of the gala shows he was on another gala show he did some stuff with mario lopez he was jamming he was improvising he was hilarious and his show is just so good he does pickpocketing all throughout the show as well and he's just wildly funny so hector is well worth coming along to see and um we have some Some other people are coming that are not official international guests,

but Gabrielle Gascon, you might have seen on Fool Us, doing the Spongeball stuff. Yeah. She's completely revolutionized Spongeball magic. Really? You just watch her do Spongeballs and you're like, I have no idea what is going on. Look up the clip on Fool Us and you'll see. So Gabrielle's doing a kid's show and an adult show and also a lecture as well. Was this the routine going, he was using sponge balls in a bowl, some kind of bowl?

Was that the routine? No, no, no. Was that the axe? No. He's got sponge balls in his hand and they're changing color. Ooh, okay. And they're like, you know, put the blue one, then it's green. I was like, hang on. And then you just, as a magician, you're watching going, I don't, I really don't know what techniques he's using. This is just crazy. Unless you're colorblind, then you're like, there's no magic here. You know?

Yeah. Now, as well as bringing these acts over, there are also a lot of lectures and so forth that come along with that. Like in the past, we've had the amazing Boris Wilde do his lecture. And I think that's really awesome of you to actually do that and bring. We were doing that. Yeah, we were doing that before Magic Festival. We'd had David Stone would come to town and say, hey, let's do a lecture while you're here.

People happen to be passing by on cruise ships or whatever it is, or just friends who say, oh, I'm going on holidays. And can you set me up with some clubs and stuff? and they're always going, yeah, sure, let's do it. And now we try to push our lecturers to go to Anthony DeMasi's Magic School of Confidence because it's a really nice venue. It's got a good vibe and Anthony really looks after everyone. It's something he really wants to do with post-lectures. He had Dan Harlan recently.

So he's had all sorts of different lecturers come through and during the year he'll have different lecturers go along to the Magic School of Confidence. But, yeah, we've got Gabriel is going to be doing his lecture at the Magic School of Confidence on the day after the Magic Festival and Hector's doing his at the Magic Festival in Arrow on Swanston in the Cardini Cabaret. But we always love having lecturers, but that's the thing. The Magic Festival is not for magicians. It's for magic bands.

Correct. I've been running Melbourne Magic Conventions, you know, the Australian conventions we used to have. You probably don't remember them. We used to have one in Sydney and then two years later it would be in, no, sorry, Sydney and then next year it would be Melbourne, then Sydney, then Melbourne, back and forth. And so we'd alternate the cities and.

We just stopped basically people just found it too much work but what i found frustrating with those lectures those conventions is they were only for magicians we're doing gala shows for magicians we're having competitions with magicians in front of magicians so that's why i started it magic week and the magic festival because i thought we should be performing in front of normal audiences you know we can come and watch each other's real shows not just our shows that

we've made up especially for magicians because often people say oh you know fizzum you're just trying to fool other magicians none of that stuff is practical in the real world which is all another conversation but i i think seeing magicians do their shows like when i saw tim credible do his kids show i was like this is how kids magic needs to be done you know it's he's so gentle with the kids he's just such you know he's got total control of them and it's you know it's a masterclass in kids

show magic you don't need to go to a lecture you just buy a ticket and come and see his show you know yeah that's the same with a lot of performers you know you don't get to see the real work well that's a really interesting point you make saying that like magic should be performed for for people uh it's like the very first thing i say in my lecture actually i say that.

Don't worry about impressing magicians they're not going to hire you it's like the very first thing i say but it brings me on to my next question so or my next point which is the The magicians at work, I've only mentioned it a few times here on the podcast, but I thought maybe you could explain it a little better to everyone else and what we do and what it offers magicians and the public. Well, I'll take you out first of all on that. Don't try impressing magicians

because they don't hire you. They do.

That's how I actually became known around the world by being hired by magicians to appear at magic conventions internationally. So by doing magic at FISM, the first act I did that I got an award for was the six card rap and diversion story again, as usual. I did the six card rap. It's a six card repeat, but done as a rap. It was 1991. So it's well dated. And I said, when I turned 50, I'd retire and I put it on the market, which I did.

And then I got all this bad feedback from people saying, saying, how dare you sell this trick? It's yours. Don't sell it.

But I'd still get people asking me to do it. So it was really weird. Anyway, so 1991, do the six-card repeat, six-card rap. I'd got a special award, so I got to perform it on the gala. And on the gala, they'd pinned the microphone to me with a safety pin, and the safety pin went through the cable of the microphone cable. So when I came out, I'm like, all right, I'll do the introduction. I'll start singing. One, two, three, four.

And I just went, cut, cut, cut. You stopped the music. So we're going to do this thing. We're going to do it properly.

And the audience went wild because there'd been lots of technical mistakes, but the magicians had just gone, you know, continued over the technical mistakes instead of calling them out and so ali bongo who's hosting he comes on with a microphone stand and he's rapping along to the microphone stand and i'm just filling in for a few minutes while they sort it all out and while they come and change the microphone and stuff and afterwards pete byro who's a big guy in the american magic

scene he booked all the ibm conventions all this he came and said that's incredible i've never seen anyone and fill and handle a situation like that so so well i said that's just like a normal show for australia always wrong you know we just accept it and he immediately booked me to do the milwaukee ibm or same convention whatever it was in in america and then i did all these other things and it just went on so you know by performing to impress magicians and doing fism stuff you

will get a reputation within the magic world, which is great. But also, so many people now know how tricks are done. They watch Fool Us, they Google solutions, they YouTube it, and I sort of approach my magic now as though I'm only performing for magicians because I figure if I'm with people who know how this trick's done already, then the people who've got no idea are going to be really fooled.

And even on the cruise ships I've had people come up and go yeah my dad used to do that trick and it has this such and such gimmick, yours yours is different is it i'm like oh really got me and it's so much better than people going oh yeah you did a good job i know that one but you did it well yeah you get the exact yeah that's true even it's totally different methods yeah it's like that notion of when people know a little bit about magic it makes them appreciate what you're doing even more so,

yeah and and i mean that's what magicians are workers about bringing this full circle magicians are workers about us bringing our routines in together and saying this is how far I've got, what else can we do with it? And we jam and we put our heads together and go, what about try this and try that? And this is where magicians who've come from other clubs and sit with us, they're like, I can't believe you're all just sharing all this gold.

Because we come up with so many different ideas. And every second month, the magicians will do a show for the public, which is free, but the public have to write notes after every act. So after every act, they've got a minute to write down, I saw it coming out of his sleeve, or I thought it was this or this was whatever. And they send the notes back. And then at the end of it, we have a theatre director who's come in and they give us theatre notes on the performances as well.

And so it's really very collaborative.

You know, we want each other to succeed. We want each other's magic to get better. And I like to sort of see myself as a magic doctor where I look at a trick and go, yep, I can see this trick is suffering from, you know, extended palm.

We need to eliminate the palm. in this routine or whatever it is and i i love like the razor blade eating was one of my first things i did that i i love the razor blade trick but i always see people slice slice slice, Or they would put the blades in and then have a big drink. And I'm like, if I was an audience member, clearly I would think something's going on there. So I wanted to come up with a way to just slice, swallow, slice, swallow.

And I put my routine together and, you know, I've got lovely compliments from people like Jeff McBride, who says it's like the best razor blade routine ever. But all I've done is gone, what's the weak point of that routine? What's the part that the audience would go, okay, something's wrong there. and eliminate it. You know, you've all done it, you know, when you're doing sponge balls and you suddenly go, I'll roll my sleeves up and do sponge balls and now it's 20 times better.

Even though it had nothing to do with the sleeves, you've just fixed a weak part of the trick.

So that's what we do. To do things like that and add strength to your routines, you know, like almost everything I do or have created, it takes at least seven reiterations before I'm actually like, okay, now it's good.

That is always evolving everything's evolving now the stuff the stuff i was doing on the cruise show, last week and i finished i'm like ah why didn't i think of that before i've got to change this you know simple little things i just go oh that that that should have changed there was like i'm doing a thing with a ring vanish and i do because i had to do a split show with some which i never do normally i would take the person's ring i'd have it in a wine glass sitting there and then i'll do

a few tricks then i'll bring in a ball of wool and then do this other stuff and then eventually it reveals it's in the ball of wool but because i had to split show there's the ring and then i brought out the ball of wool and i'm like it had a good reaction but it wasn't as strong as before i need to separate the moment of putting the ring out and bringing the ball of wool, so i did a kind of sort of rope routine in the middle and then brought the wool.

And it was 20 times better reaction but it's those weird little psychological things that you learn throughout the years if you're paying attention where you go how's the audience thinking you know at this point they're thinking hmm there's the ring like sorry sorry tell her about um the the ring under the handkerchief you know you borrow someone's ring put under the handkerchief as soon as the ring's out of sight they're going it's not the same ring anymore even if they can feel it they

go it's not the same ring something's happened the ring's gone somewhere and we've just accepted you can put a ring under a handkerchief and have them hold it and they will assume it's their own ring they don't you'd assume that you wouldn't assume it you'd be like i want to have a check no you can't look so you've got to look at it look at a trick and say what's the what's the weak point of the trick how can i fix it it's a sick yeah take it to hospital yeah it's also difficult

it's also difficult when well if you don't have a doctor or medicare and you and and you have to be self-critical do you think the self-diagnosis is a good thing to do or are we just to, you know, like, how does one be, their own doctor. It's really hard. It's really hard because you are your own worst critic, but you're also your biggest fan. You wouldn't be doing magic if you didn't believe in yourself.

That's true. And with the Melbourne Magic Festival, do you get people asking for advice on how they need to put together a show for the festival? I do warn people if they do ask me my advice because often they get it and they regret having up because I have Asperger's syndrome. So I'm going to tell them exactly what's wrong because I don't necessarily think, you know, emotionally I have to break it to them gently.

I try to give them a few good points before I tell them exactly why they should not be in magic. But everyone actually needs that advice, right? There's too much politeness. Yeah, but not everyone can take it.

Most people can't. Like Lindsay, Lindsay, who taught me his way was, he was very rough. Like you do a fantastic show. You'd come off and go, well, son, have you been on yet? You're like, or, or, um, I remember one, one magician who'd never met him before did the act. And well, what do you think Lindsay? And Lindsay just tore it to pieces. And they were like, and they didn't do magic again after that.

And Lindsay's response was, if they can't handle it for me, they're not going to be able to handle hecklers.

True. That's a good point. yeah you know it's also everyone's got their own their own way you know some people have to be nurtured and gently taken through the steps and they can become brilliant artistic performers but i think with magicians magicians especially i think we have to have a thick skin because we're going to cop it from the audience we're going to have people yelling out things during the show or grabbing our our pockets wanting to have a look in things during strolling magic and

if you Or even just walking up to a table and going, would you like to see some magic? And they go, nah. And you go away heartbroken because like, oh, no, they rejected me. It's like, no, they didn't reject you. Timing was wrong. And you were really asking a lot of those people. So, you know, just expect that sometimes people don't want to see magic, you know.

But this is the thick skin that magicians have to have. So to an extent, I think Lindsay is quite right in what he's saying. It doesn't work for everybody. And there are some people I know who are very delicate flowers who do beautiful magic.

Magic and they they you know they're in their own environment their own bubble that they've created and they create wonderful things and that's great and i would not want to be giving criticism to them because it would destroy them yeah and and you know you you mentioned something that sort of triggered a memory that you that you that you'd said to me and it's one of the most like important things that i carry with me it's like literally tattooed

in my magic dna and what you you said was that magic is such a strong form of entertainment that it carries even the weakest performer. Oh yeah. And that hit me real hard when you said that. And I thought about it because it's the same reason why an eight year old can look like an absolute master Jedi with a pack of playing cards or some sort of gimmick versus someone who's put in, you know, years and years and years of, of, of magic like we have in this, in this chat. So, um.

It's an important thing to learn because it can- It's not until the audience sees a lot of performers that they can start to understand the difference. It's like if you only saw one singer in your life and that singer was out of key and terrible, you went, oh, they remembered all the words. They were really good, you know? And that was it.

You'd have nothing to judge them by. But with magicians, it's not until you come to like a magic festival and you see a whole bunch of different magicians, and you start to go, well, that guy was really good. He was clearly much better than that person over there because they can start to judge. They can get a standard in their head, and that's why a fool us is so good. The audience can see different magicians go, well, that one, cool.

So they get to see it, and it's not a case of the weakest performer just getting carried because they can see the magic, which is usually from non-magicians, whether it be a sponge ball appearing in your hand or a card appearing at the fingertips tips or someone are getting sawn in half it's the same to the audience they go oh i was surprised and i didn't know how it was done a little dumb but when they see it performed well and this is a lot i mean i'll sound braggy i don't mean to but

this is what i i loved when i'm doing the cruise ships i'm getting people coming up and giving me comments about the storytelling in the show and the presentation and how and these people on the cruise ships that i do they've seen hundreds of magicians on these ships they've seen a lot of magic and i'm getting wonderful feedback which I'm thrilled with because, you know, you're always wanting to improve yourself. You're always wanting to get better.

And they're saying, you know, we really love the storyline and the presentation and the way you engage the audience and the way it's very authentic and all this sort of stuff. My favourite piece of feedback was one guy said, he said, I've seen a lot of magic, but yours was the first show when I was genuinely scared.

Wow. Because it got the point in the show where he was just, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Okay, I have no idea how that was done. Oh, oh, that must be real. I know that there can't be. Oh, really freaked him out because he had no other explanation apart from it must be real. And I was like, okay, that's my new standard. Yeah. Well, do you have any, that's, that's so, I mean, that's what we all want to be at, right? Like when people are just questioning their own reality, that's amazing.

Yeah. Do you have a general, like, have you noticed a theme for the shows that do well at the Melbourne Magic Festival? Like in terms of magicians wanting to come and do a show there, like are there any tendencies that shows have that you've noticed tend to do well? Like is it when they are storytelling more or? We try to encourage people to break the mold. Like everyone's out there doing their corporate shows. They're out there doing their kids shows.

They're out doing family shows. Magic festivals are time. You do something different. different, you know, everyone's got in the back of their mind, they've got their dream show, whether you, whether you're aware of it or not, you've got in the back of your mind, if I had unlimited budget and I could do anything I want, I'd do a show like this. That's what we want. We want your dream show. And, you know, look last year that we give a, I gave a director's choice award.

And last year I had to give two director's choice awards because I could not split. The two shows were so different, but had excelled in the areas they chose. So one One was Dom Chambers, A Boy and His Deck, which is a hilarious magic show and devastatingly clever and so much originality in it. It's exactly what the magic festival is all about. The other was Dane's certificate, The Sun and the Moon.

And it was so unusual and so different. It was just a 20-minute show in the close-up gallery where he performed in front of a projector, video projector light. And that was pretty much all that was lighting him, was his own music compositions, his own video content and he just came out and the light would hit him and he'd start doing this and start doing that. And the audience every show came out going.

They were just, they couldn't describe their feelings. And for me to watch a magic show and see an audience come out moved emotionally, but not really understand why or how or anything, I'm like, that has achieved a goal. You know, that has, that is something that magic doesn't normally do. And so Dane, you know, if you've ever seen any of Dane's work, it's weird, it's unusual, it's abstract, it's surreal, doesn't necessarily make sense half the time.

And sometimes it doesn't even work. but it's just an enchanting experience that you will never forget and so I was like okay these two shows they are director's choice so that. That to me to me is like what I want to.

See at the magic festival I want to see people just take taking their idea and pushing it as far as they possibly can and sometimes you know they go too far sometimes you you'll see a show and you go go you got to pull back a bit usually it's it's um it's a show that perhaps has overestimated their political correctness and maybe their um maybe maybe it would have been good in the in the 80s and perhaps it's not appropriate anymore but those are the shows that tend to find they don't

have an audience at all after the first performance but because it's not a curated curated festival and we let people in you know i curate the hub to an extent but you know people are going to get what they're going to get you know you don't go to the comedy festival and then see a bad show and you write to the comedy festival say i want my money back but the magic festival they do if they see a bad show they'll write to me and say that was a bad show usually we talk to producers and the

producers go yeah i had a bad night i'm giving you his money back you know so it's a very wholesome community feeling but you know there's so many different styles of magic and i just want to see more and more and more and i want to be surprised every year what a fun place to be to be directing this and getting to see all these things come to life and and for magicians that are hearing this right now and they're like oh that sounds like the place i want to go and actually gives me a reason

to create my dream show how does one end up in the Melbourne magic festival.

Like what, what, what part of the year do you start like taking submissions for? Usually we open submissions in October. So it's a long process. So October through to about January, people can apply. I see somebody in the chat has just said, would you ever consider gospel magic at the festival? We've had that. We've had about five or six different gospel magic shows in the festival and they've been successful. You know, every type of, every type of show that you want to have.

We've also had tarot shows at the festival. You know, you can have any style you want to have. You know, your audience is going to be your audience, whatever audience you can gather.

We had a guy gospel illusions from sydney who was going to come down pandemic hit and he wasn't able to we're still still eager for him to come down and do his shows but we also have satellite venues too so you know you can be a part of the festival and not be at the hub in the arrow you could be you could come out and do shows in schools and or um different venues where fortress was going to have a show i think sebastian was going to do a show at fortress and we have shows at storyville

We have shows at the Butterfly Club, MC Showroom, all sorts of different places. So there's so many different ways to be a part of the Magic Festival and the Open Mic Magic Night.

So if you've only got one trick, contact LJ and sign up for the Open Mic Magic Night and you'll get to perform and give it a go. And we also have the Best of the Fest, which is where performers who are in the festival can jam with other performers on a late night show. Wow. It just clicked my brain. And I remember you mentioning how, when people come to visit Melbourne, they talk about how good the magic scene is there.

And, uh, I think, didn't I read a tweet of Teller saying exactly that he was like, oh my God, Melbourne is like the hub of magic or something like that. He says the Mecca Mecca for magicians. Yeah. That's right. Teller was interesting because when he came out, he, he wasn't really wanting to jam. They don't. Penn never does, really, but Teller was not really interested in jamming with magicians. But because I've known him for a long time, I said, let's go and have dinner.

So we got a dinner, and Nick Kaye was there, and a few other magicians were there. We went to a beautiful restaurant, really nice restaurant.

And he'd also been invited to go to the Magic Circle Club. And that's a different thing. And so hobbyists go along there. It was a good club. They get along. They had a good time. Anthony DeMasi is now president of it. No, it was IBM. ASM. ASM. Yeah. ASM. He was invited. And so he said, oh, I don't want to go to the ASM because it'll be just another club. It's just another club. I don't know. And so he came and had dinner and he was just amazed at the fact we're all jamming

together and talking together. And he's like, he was really enjoying it. And then afterwards he said, Tim, I think I'm going to go to the ASM after all. Like, okay. So he went along to the ASM and there was a guy doing a lecture on the Svengali deck. Yeah. That was Eddie Calusi. He was doing an amazing lecture on that deck. I ended up buying two decks for him. You can imagine his reaction when Teller walks in and sits down in the front row.

And Teller came in and he goes, I learned a few things about the Serngali deck I didn't know. It was wonderful. And after that, you know, we took him to the Hot Springs, took him out. Almost every night he was out to dinner with magicians. And then when he went to Sydney, I thought, they've already been to Sydney, I think, or went to Brisbane, I think, and then he started meeting up with the magicians in Brisbane as well.

But he was just really happy to find a community of magicians that was different to what his experience, and he's had a lot more experience than I have, his experience in magic has been not positive with magic clubs and magic groups. So I was really pleased that we were able to change his mind a little. And you know what? And I think that... You're partly to not blame, but to be credited. I'll blame you. You're the reason you're the reason Tim, the Melbourne magic scene is so awesome.

And I think it's because you influenced me with your kindness and you gave me opportunities that I've truly felt I did not even deserve, but you were kind enough to extend the hand of friendship to me. You put me in your festival, you allowed me to sell my tickets and build my career. You helped me build so many routines.

Not only my and i can only speak from my personal experience but i've seen you do it for so many other people and i carry that same notion of helping people today through booking people at all my residencies and you know like lj who you made mention a moment ago like he's able to leave his nine to five job and work full-time for for us at omegan because what i'd love to see that happen i'd love to see magicians like i mean dom for example he was one of our first junior champions in

the junior australian junior champion of magic and now look where he is i'd love to see these magicians who become famous and well-known around the world but because they're doing fresh original authentic magic and they're not just you know cardiographic floating table you know all the same stuff that everybody else is doing all around yeah yeah they're doing there's there's an old joke on cruise ships they say if we had a bolo rama cardiographic and a floating table backstage

the magicians wouldn't have to bring anything yeah oh and a snowstorm snowstorm as well yeah but it's it's like there's so many cover bands so many cover magicians there's a market for that i guess but why you know why why why should like a famous magician once said to me said i wish i could be so creative like why why what's stopping you you know you've got everyone's creative everyone's got that's why magic sports exists so you can create so you can play the games you

can play the exercises and you can suddenly find you know you can create stuff that you hadn't thought you could create before. But this magician said, I can't afford to be bad. I said, you can't afford not to be bad. You have to be bad. You know, you have to fail because you know how humbling it is, Nick, when you get on stage and you fail and then you're like, oh, it puts you back in your place.

And I'm constantly failing. If I have a show and nothing goes wrong in the show, it's been a waste of time for me because every time I fail, I learn. Every time something doesn't work and I go, ah, you know, the, the, the great time when I went to the, the first cruise after the pandemic, no luggage, no luggage at all. I've got to do a big stage show for 45 minutes for 2000 people with nothing, literally nothing. And then the show that I ended up creating.

Worked really well and there are parts of that show that are now in my others like that i had i had a massively complicated prediction routine with a boarding pass which i made i designed so proud of myself i designed this thing so it was hands off i had like the amazed box i had a 10 what's a 1200 watch that would do this and and all these stats so i could just say good do that do that do that but ah there it is i couldn't do that i ended up using a very simple homemade device.

That wouldn't fool anyone i thought and it was so much stronger and that's now replaced all these gimmicks in this you know now it's literally like they've they've written all the suggestions into champagne buckets like destinations times and and airlines into different buckets and i just collect one two three they're read out and it matches and and i'm like people come out how did you do the boarding pass trick i'm like i've never had that reaction from the boarding pass after you before.

It's, you know, just open yourself up to failure. It's good. Embrace failure like Keith Johnson says was the worst. Absolutely, Tim. I think these stories are true. Like, they're so inspiring and you've inspired me and I tell you this, you know, on a regular basis and I hope that our listeners got a lot out of today and that Tim's stories and knowledge have inspired you guys as well. So, Tim, believe it or not, that hour went by a lot quicker than what I expected. This has been so pleasant.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us. Now, before we wrap up, Tim, And we do a little thing called the final word. So we'll roll into the final word and give you an opportunity to basically have the final word on the podcast. And you can say anything you need to say, promote anything you need to promote. And then you'll take it out, wrapping up the podcast. Are we ready to go to the final word, Tim? Okay. Let's do it.

The final word. I had no idea this was coming up. Okay. Come along to the Melbourne Magic Festival.

It's happening. July, 1 to 13 and july 8 to 13 is the best show of the festival 12 15 daily i've got to find it i don't know where it is i broke this program i don't know where it is oh there we go there it is this is the show you want to see these are a few of my favorite tricks it's a show that i'll be doing a family show i put in there it's got all sorts of favorite tricks in there including soda resurrection the rings ring flight into ball of wall beautiful card rising card

effect and of course i saw a child in half at every show as well just like you want so yes come along to see these are a few of my favorite things or just come along to the laneway theater any saturday night and see the magic box which is my current show and the one that i'm most proud of at the moment so many options, thanks for listening it's time for us to disappear now disappear now but we'll see you again on the next episode of the magic guys.